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Excellent! I look forward to the release of the Towers and what the overall impressions will be. Does Dave have an idea of pricing and when the Towers might be available? I know the chances of getting the first pair is definitely out of the question.

Very excited about this new Ascend Tower!
In fact I can't think of a single new product I'd rather see.
To me speakers are far and away the most personal component of the components that make up our music/HT systems. And speakers effect what we hear from our systems way more than any other component.
So being more of a tower guy than a bookshelf/monitor type of guy, but also a big fan of the Ascend Sierra's, when I heard Ascend was coming out with a Tower speaker based on the Sierra, well let's just say my first thought was.... sign me up!

These new Ascend towers, in what ways will they be better/inferior to the Songtower speakers? I believe the Songtowers are 4ohm, are less sensitive and don't have a dedicated midrange, advantage to the Ascend towers, right? How about imaging, detail, bass response and pricing? It looks like these two speakers will be direct competitors to each other in terms or performance (sound quality) in the $2,000 range or so. Songtowers have great reviews but perhaps the new Ascend towers will match/beat them (I'm hoping).

merrymaid has updated the first post with information about the tower.

I will continue to do so as more information is released by Dave. Please continue to check the first post for details. Full production is still a bit away yet, so be patient, Dave/Ascend has a lot on their plate at the moment with the Sierra-1 NrT upgrade and so forth

Tarp, it plays deeper for sure. I believe that in the demo room, Dave said measured 36hz.

Hmmm, thats interesting considering the only difference is an improved tweeter and crossover. All indications would be that the improvements would be at the highest frequencies (tweeter) and at just below the crossover frequencies of the woofer. The bottom end shouldn't change.

Hmmm, thats interesting considering the only difference is an improved tweeter and crossover. All indications would be that the improvements would be at the highest frequencies (tweeter) and at just below the crossover frequencies of the woofer. The bottom end shouldn't change.

The bigger enclosure alone gets you more bass. There may be other differences as well.

Excellent! I look forward to the release of the Towers and what the overall impressions will be. Does Dave have an idea of pricing and when the Towers might be available? I know the chances of getting the first pair is definitely out of the question.

Bill

Howdy Bill,
I think he is shooting for them to come in around $2K, but final price is TBD. Some guy supposedly already has the first pair ordered......impatient I guess.

You could be right! I will adjust the first post. Some thread starting expert I am.

I don't think he is, they're all the same size. I believe Curtis is the source of this confusion, him and his distorted cell phone pictures which makes the top woofer look bigger because he takes the pic from a downwards angle and the mid is closer than the woofers to the lens... But if you look at the pics on the first post, considering the front of the cabinet is rectangular, the woofers are all the same size

You people and your crappy lenses... Tilt/shift lenses lenses exist for a reason!!! Just kidding, the above pics and others were nice, as were Curtis sneak preview cell shots!

For the name for the towers, I think the Ascend Descent would be pretty nice...

These new Ascend towers, in what ways will they be better/inferior to the Songtower speakers? I believe the Songtowers are 4ohm, are less sensitive and don't have a dedicated midrange, advantage to the Ascend towers, right? How about imaging, detail, bass response and pricing? It looks like these two speakers will be direct competitors to each other in terms or performance (sound quality) in the $2,000 range or so. Songtowers have great reviews but perhaps the new Ascend towers will match/beat them (I'm hoping).

Spanish,

I believe some folks can possibly answer your Salk ST vs Ascend tower question over on the ascend Tower thread

Once my Ascend towers arrive, I hope to meet up with my buddy Brandon (nuance) who has the Salk ST's with the Ribbons to do a comparo and will report back the results.

I don't think he is, they're all the same size. I believe Curtis is the source of this confusion, him and his distorted cell phone pictures which makes the top woofer look bigger because he takes the pic from a downwards angle and the mid is closer than the woofers to the lens... But if you look at the pics on the first post, you can see that all drivers are all the same size.

Considering the front of the cabinet is rectangular, the woofers are all the same size

You make a valid point. I originally had the size as 5.25" but figured since curtis seen it this past weekend, I adjusted accordingly. From that pic, it has to be awfully close to the same size as the woofers which we know are 5.25".

These new Ascend towers, in what ways will they be better/inferior to the Songtower speakers?

We did instant A/B switching (level matched) between the earlier version of the Ascend towers and the Songtowers at the previous get together in August.

The difference in imaging was obvious. One of the posters here at AVS (ivanpino) noticed that tilting his head out of the sweet spot, even a foot, caused the centre image for the Songtowers to disappear. Some of us had trouble believing that, considering the reputation of Salk speakers. So we took turns listening for ourselves and ended up confirming what Ivan heard.

By comparison, the Ascend towers continued to image well outside the sweet spot. Naturally, the centre image pulled towards whichever speaker you were closest to, but that's normal for a phantom image. At the get together last Saturday, I ended up sitting near one of the side walls for a time, almost in line with the right speaker. Dave F was standing next to me and we both noticed that there still was some imaging between the speakers, even that far out of the sweet spot. I'll admit it was impressive.

Some of the A/B switching at the previous get together was done using one of each speaker, placed directly in front. This took away the distraction of soundstage and imaging, letting us concentrate on tonal qualities (Harman always does speaker comparisons this way). From what I remember of the previous get together, bass response was on par between both speakers. The Ascends were a little clearer, especially on female vocals, maybe due to the midrange driver. When playing louder material, the dual woofers in Salks bottomed out a couple of times (was easy to repeat). No such problem with the Ascends.

Listening to the towers at the recent get together, the bass sounded deeper and cleaner on the same material I had listened to last time. Unfortunately, we weren't able to compare them to the previous version to get a better handle on how much it had changed. Other attributes (imaging, detail, etc) seemed to remain the same as before. They still excelled at reproducing vocals.

Those new Ascend towers will be in my short shopping list for speakers to upgrade from my Sierra-1. I was also looking at the Songtowers but the more I hear of the new Ascend towers matching or even exceeding the Songtowers in sound quality, the more I'm liking them. I can just upgrade my center Sierra-1 with the NrT kit and leave my 170 surrounds alone. I guess there's still no date when they'll be available, right? Thanks for those reviews so far regarding the new towers.

The difference in imaging was obvious. One of the posters here at AVS (ivanpino) noticed that tilting his head out of the sweet spot, even a foot, caused the centre image for the Songtowers to disappear. Some of us had trouble believing that, considering the reputation of Salk speakers. So we took turns listening for ourselves and ended up confirming what Ivan heard.

Sanjay,

I am listening to Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue right now and tried tilting and turning and my head outside of the sweet spot. I am really not hearing the center image disappear. I am hearing the image come off center to a small degree but not to the point of losing the center image. My STs are only about 6' apart so I'm not sure if the lack of distance apart makes a difference. When you say the center image disappears do you mean vocals which should be centered are coming from the speaker one is tilting their head towards?

Quote:

By comparison, the Ascend towers continued to image well outside the sweet spot. Naturally, the centre image pulled towards whichever speaker you were closest to, but that's normal for a phantom image.

I have to admit the above statement has me baffled. It almost sounds like the same thing is happening with the Towers as with the STs in that the center image is being pulled towards the speaker one is the closest to.

I am not in any way trying to say that the STs image better than the Towers just that the description of the two instances are very similar. I will have to break out my Sierras and do a side by side comparison.

Quote:

At the get together last Saturday, I ended up sitting near one of the side walls for a time, almost in line with the right speaker. Dave F was standing next to me and we both noticed that there still was some imaging between the speakers, even that far out of the sweet spot. I'll admit it was impressive.

I just tried standing 8' back and directly in front of the right speaker then the left and the imaging is still quite good. I did this a number of times back and forth and the imaging does not get to the point where it seems that the music is only coming from one speaker. Sounds radiating out of the left speaker still are placed there even when standing by the right speaker and vice versa. Naturally the vocals lose that center image you talked about earlier but still sound quite good. I am doing this test with Eva Cassidy's Live At Blues Alley CD playing. I have never heard Stormy Monday sound so good.